Spinmeisters in government? I’m shocked

Several times a day, my email in-basket goes ringy-ding with messages from “PMO-CPM.”

That’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s flack office. It’s been happening for several months, and I’ve never once used one of these publicity advisories for anything, and I can’t imagine any other newspaper has, either. 

Today, for example, came an announcement “for immediate release” that the PM would be meeting with Abdou Diouf, Secretary-General of La Francophonie, and Kamalesh Sharma, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, in his office. Be there no later than 3:15 p.m. and gather in the Foyer of the House of Commons with proper accreditation.

Mind you, if you were a journalist and figured there might be a story in that, well never mind, because this was a “photo opportunity only (cameras and photographers only).” In other words, no questions allowed; nothing but hand shakes and smiling faces.

Almost all of these advisories are for photo opps, and the only thing I’ve learned from them is that the PM frequently takes a break from slagging the Liberals to have his picture taken.

The reason for this sudden onslaught of information about photo opps with Harper becomes clear in view of the three-part series currently running in The Daily News (Part 3 runs Wednesday) on spin control in the PMO. Canadian Press reporters Mike Blanchfield and Jim Bronskill got their hands on a mess of material via a Freedom of Information application that shows the extent to which the PMO tries to control the message, muzzling anyone who is off cue.

“The first casualty of war is the truth,” someone reminded me today after reading Part 2 on how the PMO has stage-managed the rationale for keeping our troops in Afghanistan. Well, that’s probably a little strong, because spin-doctoring often is about burying bad news by over-blowing good news, not necessarily blatant lying.

But there’s no question no previous prime minister has been so fixated on controlling what we know about his government.